by Geonn Cannon
“You said that their numbers are great, and I believe that’s true. I believe their population has grown unchecked for the past few centuries, a by-product of that damnable treaty, and that is why we must act now. People will learn about the enemy hiding in their midst. And whether that results in executions or merely running them out of society, I am not in a position to guess.”
Dale could feel a scream building like a physical object lodged in her throat. It wasn’t enough that humans were constantly finding reasons to persecute and kill each other, the country wasn’t tearing itself apart enough already, this asshole wanted to dig up an old grudge to create a new group to discriminate against? She bit back the diatribe she had planned, focusing on a spot just above Roemer’s head to avoid making eye contact.
“You don’t think we have enough problems as it is?”
“That’s exactly the reason we have to do this. Imagine humanity united against a common threat. Wolves are literally at our door, quietly infiltrating. Once people have been made aware, they can start fighting back. They can forget about silly separations like political affiliations and loyalty to a country when they see what a true enemy looks like.”
Dale knew that wasn’t ever going to be the case. But she had a part to play. She ran her hands through her hair and looked around the park. Roemer was standing there ranting about uniting humanity against a common threat, and no one in the park was even looking sideways at them. She guessed it was just that kind of a neighborhood.
“People don’t even believe the video is real,” she said.
“They’re starting to.” He sounded fully confident. “The longer it goes on, the more attention it will get. And the more attention it gets, the more people will look for evidence that it’s fake. They won’t find it. So by the time that girl finally gives in to her primal urge and transforms, we will have millions of eyes on us and everyone will be confident it’s the real thing.”
“The more attention it gets,” Dale said, “the more likely you’ll have police scouring the city because you kidnapped a woman and you’re holding her hostage. If they don’t find you, the website is bound to be taken down.”
“We have a man on our team in charge of making sure that doesn’t happen. We’ve covered our angles, Miss Frye. We know that we’re up against a clock. We don’t have to buy all the time in the world. Just a few weeks.” His smile grew, becoming more sinister. “By then the damage will be done, and we’ll have an army standing at our backs to defend us.”
Dale raised an eyebrow. “So war. Your endgame really is an all-out war between humans and wolves here in the middle of Seattle.”
“Seattle will just be ground zero. It will spread, believe me. The war will be fought wherever there are wolves. Hunters and uninitiated humans alike will join together. Wolves like your friend Ariadne won’t stand a chance.”
Dale looked at Hayden, who had remained silent throughout the sermon. “What about you? You still claim you just want to create awareness? You know that there will be people like him no matter what happens.”
Hayden worked his jaw. “We can ask for... understanding. We can push for communication--”
Dale laughed and shook her head. “I just said that humans can’t get along with each other for believing different things. Hell, we hate people who cheer for the wrong sports team. People find out werewolves are real, it’s going to be a massacre. Maybe, maybe, after the first wave of violence, some cooler heads will start to prevail. But a lot of wolf blood is going to be shed before that happens.”
Roemer clapped Dale on the shoulder and she jumped, tensing to avoid the urge to shake off his grip. She turned and saw his grinning face way too close to hers.
“The time is coming, Miss Frye,” he said. “When Marin Cardoso finally gives in and transforms, the world is never going to be the same.”
Dale forced a weak and unconvincing smile.
Hope you’re making progress, puppy, she thought, because the idea of faking who I am for this asshole is seriously going to give me an ulcer.
***
Milo sat cross-legged in the living room of her own home, facing a window that looked out on their backyard. She was naked, calm, her mind clear. She’d come back home in the hopes that the familiar scents would trigger the wolf to come out. You’re home now. You’re safe. So far there still hadn’t been an answer despite the change of location.
She had been trying to reach the wolf all morning with no luck. She couldn’t remember being rounded up by the police, going to the hospital, or Ari taking her to Dr. Snow’s. She didn’t even know how she’d gotten to Seattle. The gap in her memory terrified her. There were months of her life she couldn’t account for. And judging from Dr. Snow and the condition she’d been in when she was found, it wasn’t a very fun time.
And Gwen was still suffering.
She opened her eyes and took another long, slow breath. The wolf was there. She would know if it was gone. She’d never had to work this hard to transform, and she doubted it would happen before Gwen was safe. Still, she had to try. So she rolled her shoulders, cleared her throat, lifted her chin, and thought back to Germany.
They’d stayed in so many inns, hostels, guest rooms, and cottages during the trip that every room combined in her brain until they were just a blur of generalities: a huge bed, an armoire that was older than both of them combined, exposed stone or log walls, windows straight out of a Gothic movie set, and views that made her feel like she’d been transported back in time. Everywhere they went, they had to be careful about who they trusted. Hayden had gotten the book somehow. He’d killed the wolves who had dedicated their lives to protecting it. Every ally they met was also a potential traitor.
And one of those traitors had ended up betraying them.
No, she scolded herself. Only the nice thoughts.
Like lying in bed with Gwen, a woman she never would have matched herself with. And it would be a lie to say it was love at first sight. Gwen was a terrible person when they met. Singularly focused on her goal, cold, calculating, the sort of person who would manipulate her own daughter to accomplish what she wanted. The Gwen she met was cruel, but she had a stack of money she was willing to hand over to Milo, and Milo liked the idea of never again worrying about where her rent would come from.
Gwen changed when she reconciled with Ari. They fought together during wolf manoth, and Milo started to see her in a new light. She started to understand Gwen was someone who’d been thrown into a life she never asked for and tried to do the best she could. She’d never really had a life outside of fighting hunters and, when peace was reestablished, she found herself adrift.
Milo decided she was attractive enough to be worth a night or two. Gwen claimed she was straight; Milo argued she hadn’t really had enough experience to say for sure what she was. So they slept together. Then they slept together again. Gwen quickly realized that she was bisexual, and Milo had to admit that she was starting to hope whatever they were doing would last longer than a night, or a weekend, or even an extended holiday.
She didn’t fall in love. She certainly didn’t fall in love with Americans who were old enough to be her mother. Someone who actually was the mother of someone she considered a friend. But wolves aged differently than humans, so the gap between them wasn’t all that big of a hurdle. Ari had found it uncomfortable at first but eventually she came around. When Milo introduced Gwen to the rest of her pack, a few of them had exchanged money to pay off lost bets, but they all agreed that being with Gwen was a good thing for her.
She hoped she was good for Gwen. She hoped she hadn’t done something wrong in Germany and led the hunters to them. If she was responsible for whatever was happening--
The front door to the house opened and Ari came in. “Milo?”
Milo snapped out of her trance and relaxed her shoulders. “In here.” She picked up the T-shirt next to her and stood up, wriggling into it as she walked to the kitchen. Ari was facing away from her at the coun
ter, unloading one of three plastic grocery bags.
“Hey,” Ari said without turning around. “I brought you some stuff. Cereal, pasta, milk, bread. The staples.”
“I appreciate that,” Milo said.
Ari finally faced her, but she wasn’t wearing her own face. She looked like a man with a wide jaw and small rat eyes. His eyebrows were thick and knitted together over a broken nose.
Milo recoiled and slammed into the fridge, her teeth bared and her back arched and knees bent. She saw the face in flashes of memories: on a plane with a syringe, surrounded by darkness, the lines of his features blurred by pain... no, water, she’d been held underwater and looked up to see him looming over her, his hands a drowning pressure on her shoulders, and she heard his voice fucking mutt as she was thrown onto the floor.
“Hey, hey, hey.” Ari’s face was her own again, and she had her hands on Milo’s shoulders. “Shit, what a bad idea. Hey. It’s okay, it’s me. Milo. Milo, you can relax. It’s me.”
“Where’d he go?” Milo whipped her head left, then right, trying to see where Earl - fuck, his name was Earl - had gone. “Where’d he go?” she asked again. Her heart felt like a wrecking ball against the inside of her ribs. “Ari, that was one of... he was here, he was right here, he was b-behind you or something.”
“I know, pup, it was Earl Foster. Diana found a file on him.” She picked up the mask she’d been wearing when she came into the house. It was Foster’s face blown up to life-size. “I had this made because I wanted to try tricking your brain into remembering him. I didn’t think it would work that well. Damn, I’m sorry.”
Milo wet her lips and clung to Ari. The tension faded from her along with the rush of adrenaline. She felt like she needed to throw up.
“No, it’s good. It’s good. Shock to the system.” She patted Ari’s cheek, then slapped her gently. “Asshole. It worked. I remembered him. He’s... he was...” She put one hand on her stomach, the wave returning. “Oh, shit... back up.”
Ari took a step away from her. “What’s wrong? Do you need a bucket?”
“I’m... I think I’m...”
Milo cried out in pain and dropped to her knees. Pain spread down the center of her face like someone was drawing a red-hot knife down the bridge of her nose, and her voice broke with the snap of her jaw. She felt hands on her and had just enough presence of mind to lift her arms so Ari could peel the T-shirt off of her. When she dropped her arms they had become more slender, furred, and her hands hit the ground as paws. Milo stretched out her neck and arched her back, then collapsed in a heap at Ari’s feet. Ari knelt next to her, stroking her flanks.
“It’s okay. You’re all right.”
Milo trembled violently, then rolled and tried to get to her feet. She slumped against the cabinets and hung her head. A mournful howl rumbled up from her chest and came out through barely-parted lips. She turned her eyes to Ari, who returned the stare with concern.
“Milo? You in there, babe?”
She got onto her feet and went into the living room. She was aware of Ariadne following her, could feel the concern flowing off of her like a scent, but she ignored it. She sniffed around to confirm Gwyneth wasn’t there and howled again, nudging Gwen’s reading chair before she turned and charged up the stairs. Into the bedroom, sniffing the sheets, over to the closet. Not only was Gwen gone, her scent was fading, almost gone now, she’d been gone so long. Milo walked in a circle, confused and scared. Where Gwen? How long gone Gwen? When come back Gwen?”
Ariadne was in the bedroom doorway watching her. Milo growled at her. Ariadne held up her hands, peace, and Milo began to pace.
She had seen Gwen not long ago. Gwen in a room. Gwen unconscious. Hurt? Asleep? Bad men, warning her, threatening. They had hurt her. Hurt Gwen. Pain. So much pain. She had heard Gwen cry out in the night and beat her fists bloody against the door trying to break it down. Hurt her shoulder, worried she wouldn’t be able to change until that was fixed. She remembered sedatives. The doctor, Val, the nice one, helping. Soothing the pain.
Milo threw her head back and howled. Long, mournful, painfully loud in the confines of the bedroom. Ariadne was speaking... “If you’re -- a run -- warning so -- change and -- with you -- an eye on you” or something... but Milo was more concerned about how empty the house was. Gwen was somewhere. Gwen was close but also very far away because the Bad Men were all around her. The Bad Men who had taken them away in Germany.
She realized she remembered things that had been erased from her human memory. Something had happened to erase or block those memories when she was a person, but the wolf mind held onto them. She got back down on the carpet and went to Ariadne, looking up at her with hopeful eyes. Ari crouched down and returned the stare.
“--to help you, but--”
Milo turned away and jumped back onto the bed. She stretched her forepaws out, strained, and she watched her fingers unfurl like sprouting plants. The fur receded down her arms, her bones popped and snapped and her whole body jerked with the force of it. She whimpered and cried out, the animal sounds changing to “Ah!” and “Fuck!” She had a splitting migraine, but then relief spread across the base of her skull. She felt her hair fall across her forehead and flopped onto her side, panting hard, drawing her knees up to her chest as she shivered in the sudden cold of the room. She was covered with sweat from the quick changes, and from her frantic search of the house.
Ari pulled a blanket across her body, then rested a hand on her shoulder. “Milo? Are you... yourself?”
Milo rolled onto her back and clutched the blanket to her chest.
“I remember, Ari. I remember everything.”
Chapter Thirteen
Milo had managed to put on sweatpants and a hoodie before she finally sat up and took the glass of water Ari offered her. She barely took a breath as she drained it, exhaling sharply when she handed it back. Ari took it to the bathroom sink to refill it.
“So I guess the transformation constipation has cleared up,” Ari said.
“Ugh, don’t say it like that,” Milo said.
“It rhymes. When it rhymes, that makes it cute. Here.” She handed the glass to Milo and sat down on the edge of the bed. She watched as Milo took a more leisurely drink. “So I don’t want to press you too hard... but when you say you remember everything...”
Milo shook her head. “I don’t think I ever saw the exterior of the building where we were being held. I was either unconscious or they put this bag over our heads whenever they had to move us somewhere.”
Ari grimaced. “Damn. I didn’t think we’d be that lucky, but I had to ask. So what do you remember?”
“Faces,” Milo said. “I can recognize all the assholes who were holding me hostage. Everything they did to me.” Her jaw tightened. “They tortured us, Ari. They tried to draw the wolf out. They did everything but cut us open to see what our organs looked like.”
“As much as I hate the man, you probably have Hayden to thank for that. He claims he doesn’t want to kill us, he just wants the world to know we exist.”
Milo stared at her in disbelief. “This is the same guy who slaughtered the wolves guarding the Magnusson essays, right? You don’t really believe that shit heel, do you?”
Ari shrugged. “I’m just trying to make sense of what’s happening. How about this... do you know why I can’t smell the hunters?”
“Yes,” Milo said. “They did a whole battery of tests on how sensitive our noses are. They tried some godawful stenches. I don’t even know what everything was. But after a few weeks of experimenting, they came in and I didn’t smell anything. I mean nothing. It was like they walked in, flipped a switch, and all the smells in the whole building turned off. I think they found some kind of cologne that masks them from us. It’s the only thing that makes sense. But I can’t imagine how something that powerful wouldn’t smell like absolute death to a human nose.”
“Whatever it is, we need to start warning other canidae. We still don’t know what
Roemer and Hayden are planning, or if their plans are even complimentary. Until we know that, we have to act like there’s another wolf manoth just around the corner.”
“I can help spread the word.”
“Are you sure you’re up for that?”
Milo gestured at the room around her. “I can’t just sit around here anymore, Ari. I know I need to heal, but I’m going crazy. I have my wolf back now. She might not be perfect, but she’s close enough that I can contribute.”
Ari nodded. She’d been on the opposite side of this argument enough to trust Milo’s word but also knew to take her assertion with a grain of salt. She’d let Milo help, but she’d keep an eye on her.
“So, help. What do you remember about the day Marin got taken?”
Milo closed her eyes. “There was a drug they used. They came into my room... they kept me, and I guess Gwen, in these rooms that used to be offices or something. Not actual cells, but they might as well have been. It was before dawn. They dragged me off the bed and pinned me to the ground. They jabbed me with something and then things went... fuzzy.” She opened her eyes but looked at the floor, seeing the past instead of what was in front of her.
“Did they ever...” Ari cleared her throat. “I know it’s, uh...”
“No,” Milo said. “We were spared that, at least. The drug knocked me out and, when I woke up again, I was in the back of a van. We were driving. One of them... I think, um, I think he was the one who was always hanging out with...” She gestured in the general direction of the kitchen. “The guy whose face you borrowed. I’d... I had...” She put her fingers to her temples. “I can’t even remember if I was the wolf or not.”
“Given how they found you, I’m not surprised.”
Milo nodded. “At some point I must have changed. I don’t remember getting undressed in front of them. I might have become the wolf at the prison, but I don’t know for sure. We got to the park and one of them took me out. He said my friend was out in the woods. Go find my friend and bring them back to the van. They said if I wasn’t back in an hour, they’d take it out on Gwen.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’d heard her scream, Ari. I don’t know... I didn’t... I’ve never he-heard Gwen scream like that. I don’t know what they could have been doing, but I...”
